Computer systems continue to evolve, with ever faster processing speeds, greater data handling capabilities, and increasing storage capacity. Computers have also been steadily reduced in size. This size reduction is most apparent in the laptop, notebook, tablet and hand-held computer markets. While desiring to continuously decrease the size and weight of laptops, notebooks, and hand-held computers, manufacturers have also steadily reduced the size and weight of on-board batteries. Because battery-life in laptops, notebooks, and hand-held computers is such a strong consideration, power management methods are utilized to increase battery-life.
Conventional computer systems can provide the user with a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows the user to define characteristics of system power management. In one exemplary embodiment, to save power in an idle mobile or notebook computer, a phased sleep process is provided after a detected period of inactivity. For example, the phased sleep process can begin by dimming a display device, such as a display panel, which reduces power consumption by turning down the backlight after the computer system has been idle for a prescribed length of time. A next phase can include turning the display panel off after a second prescribed length of time (e.g., display device in D3). A further phase can put the computer system into a sleep state after a third prescribed length of time (e.g., suspend in S3). Lastly, the computer system can be shut down in a hibernation step after a fourth prescribed length of time (e.g., hibernate in S4). Each of these steps in a phased sleep process can save progressively more power with a primary difference between the steps being the amount of power and the latency to enter or exit the state. To undim or wake-up the display or turn the display back on, a user needs to interact with the computer system (e.g. move the mouse or make contact with a touch pad or keyboard). Such interaction with the computer system will result in the display panel exiting the current phase of the phased sleep process, from as simple a step as undimming the display panel to resuming from a sleep state.
While many activities carried out on a computer system can be performed without interference or disruption from such power conservation states, passive or semi-passive activities will often be interpreted as computer system inactivity, resulting in the undesirable steps such as dimming the backlight or disabling the display entirely. Such passive or semi-passive activities include for example, the reading of text found in eBook reader programs, word processing programs, reading web pages, and other modes of use wherein the computer user spends the majority of the time viewing the computer screen with minimal mouse, keyboard or other system interaction. Other user activities can also potentially result in the display device undesirably dimming or powering down while it was being used. While the display can be re-enabled, and backlight can be easily restored to the desired level, by the user merely moving the mouse, touching the keyboard, or interacting with another input device, it requires a continuing pattern of user interactions with the computer system. Requiring such distracting, repeated and annoying interactions can often result in user frustration, and the user selecting power management timer settings that are so long (before dimming or powering down the display panel) that they defeat the purpose of power management. For example, to prevent the annoyance of the display device from undesirable disabling while the user is verbally presenting content on the screen or occasionally reading email while in a meeting, the user may select a maximum length of time before display disabling takes place, or even worse, turn off power conservation entirely. This dramatically shortens the battery-life and results in user complaints on the inability to achieve the product's original stated battery-life.